Glenn Grothman (R-WI): Workers Having Weekends Off Is ‘Goofy’, ‘Kills Freedom’

Glenn Grothman, the Republican Assistant Majority Leader of the Wisconsin Senate, is fighting to make sure that workers can avoid such horrible burdens as rest and pleasure with family. Since not a day goes by in this topsy-turvy, Mad Max world that Republicans are trying to create, State Senator Grothman is pushing to overturn a Wisconsin law that employers have to provide employees one day off. Seeing as Mr. Grothman is painfully single obviously he wouldn’t mind being away from home 7 days a week. In any case, Wisconsin is rapidly losing out on labor growth due to its anti-worker policies.

Glenn Grothman Thinks Seven Day Work Week Brings Freedom To Employee

In a email obtained by Huff Po, Senator Grothman is trying to pass legislation that would allow an employee to “voluntarily choose to work without one day off.”

“Right now in Wisconsin, you’re not supposed to work seven days in a row, which is a little ridiculous because all sorts of people want to work seven days a week,” Grothman told The Huffington Post.

The law that Glenn Grothman also called “goofy” and  undoing it is a matter of “freedom,” is one in which the state’s employers must afford employees with at least one period consisting of 24 consecutive hours of rest in each calendar week.  However, it seems an employee could work for up to 12 consecutive days so long as “the days of rest fall on the first and last days of the 2 week period.” But while this law change seems innocuous at first glance, it can (and will) lead to employer abuse.

Ross Eisenbrey, Vice President of the Economic Policy Institute, believes that such a change could lead to employers forcing their employees to work the extra time.

“It’s a very hard thing to know whether something is truly voluntary or not,” said Eisenbrey.  “If the employer puts pressure on people and lets them know they will be unhappy if workers exercise their right to have a day off, that might be enough so that no worker ever does anything but volunteer to work seven days a week.” (Think Progress)

Get back to work, Cratchit!

What Mr. Grothman is painfully ignoring in this debate is that companies are not always, and it can even be argued are rarely,  looking out for the best interest of their employees. In 2009, two-thirds of low-income workers said they had experienced a wage law violation in the previous week alone in what is known as wage theft. Wage theft is where an employer illegally withholds overtime pay or makes its employees work off the clock. But it’s not just relegated to red states. For example, in super-duper liberal California, workers recovered less than half of what was taken from them from 2008 to 2011.

The fact remains that Americans work far more than any of their fellow democratic counterparts. Unless your job is chief foreman of puppy breath and sugar satisfaction at the puppy dog/candy store, chances are you’re probably going to want to use that day off to recover with friends or family. Or more likely in the modern electronic world, talk to friends and family via a touchscreen. But for self-loathing, misery projecting misers like Glenn Grothman, it’s one simple mantra: work, buy, work more, die.